The Case For The Humanities

As of late, the humanities disciplines have come under fire by conservative groups as being irrellivant, archaic, and too "left". In particular, the study of history has become particularly entrenched in debates of whether its study is worthwhile in academia any longer and whether the research in history is even relevant to our modern condition. As a passionate lover of history and other humanities courses, this is quite troublesome to me. However, I think this mindset if irrelivancy from the outside is, in part as some would suggest, due to historians and academics in the field for simply taking its existance for granted. The president of the American Historical Assosciation, Gabrielle Spiegel, stated that historians have "not been very clever about the ways in which we argue for the importance and centrality of our fields of inquiry." Spiegel goes on to write that too often people in the field "tend to rely on old shibboleths about the importance of understanding history, art, languages, and so on, and understanding what it means to 'be human'."

I tend to agree with Dr. Spiegel in the points she makes. It seems as though many in the field are in an ivory tower that can seem very disengaging and impossibly daunting to a person who may only casually explore the field. I believe history and the humanities, in general, are particularly relevant today. With the climate of anti-intellectualism and unchecked power/ethics, I can't see a better time than now to encourage such areas of study since they seem to be so desperately needed. Similarly, Dr. Spiegel wrote "American society and government has never needed the kind of historical, linguistic, ethical, and cultural instruction offered instruction offered by the humanities more crucially than at the present time,"..."The exercise of power without the sense of ethical responsibility is dangerous; the exercise of power without historical knowledge is a prescription for disaster."

How do we overcome these barriers and make the field less "dense" and more accessible? First, it should be noted, the field itself is difficult because, by nature, it requires a lot of information to truly understand. Often this turns off a reader or a student because they simply don't want to engage in that kind of work. Secondly, history, in a broad sense, is a continuing narrative and cannot be necessarily read for its face value from one book. There must be more than one source to draw from on a subject so that you gain depth and perspective. As I learned from my professors, and wisely so, that whenever reading anything with historical significance, ask yourself three vital questions: 1) Who wrote it, 2) when did they write it, 3) and why? These questions are not as easy to answer as it sounds and what makes the practice so fascinating to some and dreadful to others.

So how do we overcome this problem? One person suggested that historians should make their work more readable for the common man. I do agree with this to a degree. Like I said before, history by nature is full of information. To deny any of that information can ruin the integrity of the endeavor and even the author too (i.e. Ambrose). With that said, historians can take a page from their colleagues in the English department and make their works flow more like a story. Because, after all, history is essentially story-telling right? You know, the whole continuing narrative? The very best books I have read that related to history read like a fiction novel, but I knew in the back of my mind that these events actually happened and these people really lived. Also, the author introduced facts and information that are unique and off-beat. That's what gets people interested, not the stereotypical recital of names and dates. However, the author should not take liberties and begin writing fiction about a person or event(s), as so often can be the case and can be so easy to do. Give me the passion in the details of why somebody acted the way they did or why an event occured like it did. That's what is fascinating about the field. The Why's and How's. In pursuit of those answers we not only find the aswers to those questions, but we learn about ourselves, where we were, where we are, and where we will be in regard to the human condition.